Sorry Sir our economy is far worse than you you have been better than for really long time Sir but don't know why you didn't focused on your forces much hope what is happening to Ukraine wakes your politicians up
First, the reason our economy is better than yours is that we didnt involve in nuclear race or any prolonged war which required constant flow of huge money to the military. If our relationship with Australia is as bad as yours with India, our economy level and military policy would be the same.
If you talk about why we didnt focused on our military forces development while we have better economy and more money to spend compares to your position, i have a story to explain that. I call it "A Series of Unfortunate Events"
Lets go back to the sixties : Everything is bad. We are still very young country facing disintegration situation which required a strong military force and strong idealism and NATIONAL ISSUE to enforce the nationalism, to keep our country from falling apart.
Thats when our 1st president Soekarno declare the confrontation with Malaysia, get into shopping spree for advanced military hardware from USSR and completely neglecting the economy development.
Back then, we have the strongest Air Force and submarine squadron in Southern Hemisphere.
But we pay that short decades of having glorious and luxurios weapons with huge amount of crippling economy situation that goes into the 70's era.
In the 70's, Soekarno regime falls, but
Unfortunately it leaves our Army embargoed by the Russian while suffering economy crisis. For the rest of the 70's, our armed forces lives under the mercy of our new 'big brother' -> USA. Most of our main weapons are supplied or donated by US & Western Ally.
In the 80's our economy bounced back from crisis and we live in the era of 'good life' with better education, welfare program and achieve the independency of sustainable food supply.
But
Unfortunately, we cannot use our money to develop the armed force because we are very much under US control.
We cannot choose what better for our military, we buy only what we are allowed us to by.
Entering the 90's, the Cold War ends, Capitalism has defeat Communism -- the new war begins : The War for Resources.
US pulled out from Subic & Clark in Philippine and USSR leave its Camh Ran base in Vietnam.
And
Unfortunately, along with the end of communist expansion threat, US didnt see Indonesia as important military partner anymore and start pressing our military with "Human Right Issue"
The Army got embargoed by US and its Western partner while Russia still struggle with economy crisis after the fall of communism and disintegration of Soviet Republic.
This leave our Army once again suffered from the lacks of spare parts, this time of US-Western Weapons they are feeding us since the 70's.
By the end of the 90's we start planing to Re-Developing of our military forces since we are free to choose the source of our military hardwares.
But
Unfortunately, in 1997 Asia suffers the monetary crisis up until the first part of the 2000's
In mid 2000's with the economic situation are going up again so our government re-started the strategic plans to developing our Military Forces. Learning from the "Series of Unfortunate Events", we come to conclusion that Building Military Posture must not neglecting the economy. And now we just started with the Minimum Essential Forces Strategic Program.
We should never let this new trend of "Ukrainian Lesson' to become justification for us to build an Armed Force with hundreds of Sukhoi jets and thousand of Main Battle tanks but sacrificing the economy and leaving our people to live in poverty.
We have learned our own lesson of doing it in the 60's.
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